The Haunting of Hell Hollow
20:31 Share

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.

So we're cruising down Route 49 in Voluntown, Connecticut. Yeah. And we're going to be taking our next right up ahead. Okay. Okay.

Wait a minute. This road is called Hell Hollow Road? It is. I think we've covered enough stories in enough places called hollows to know that they're just about all haunted. It seems that way, doesn't it? Yes. But Hell Hollow? I mean, that's another level. It is. They say you'll hear disembodied shrieks out here in these woods, that there's an old desecrated grave out here that's been cursed. We've come to Hell Hollow to pick apart the fact from fiction in search for the Witch of Hell Hollow.

I'm Jeff Belanger. Welcome to episode 396 of the New England Legends podcast. And I'm Ray Ogier. Thank you for joining us as we chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. Please be sure to hit that subscribe button and we'll bring you new stories of ghost monsters, aliens, roadside oddities, and other wicked strangeness each week. We'll go searching for the Witch of Hell Hollow Road right after this word from our sponsor.

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Jewel Osco. Now through June 24th, score hot summer savings and earn four times the points. Look for in-store tags on items like General Mills cereal, Chobani Greek yogurt, Pillsbury Crescent rolls, cinnamon rolls, and biscuits, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Lindor chocolate truffles, Tillamook ice cream, and Cove probiotic sodas.

Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings. Shop in-store or online for easy drive-up and go-pick-up or delivery. Subject to availability. Restrictions apply. Visit JewelOsco.com for more details.

So, Jeff, we're driving on Hell Hollow Road in Voluntown, Connecticut. Right. Now, right now, we're passing some pretty nice middle-class homes. The homeowners are clearly taking care of their properties. I see some kid toys in one of those yards. So, families obviously live here. Yeah, yeah, I see that. And now those homes are behind us. Hell Hollow Road is winding its way into the woods. Yeah, it's nothing but a spooky road in the forest now. We're in Patchogue State Forest, and we just passed Hell Hollow Pond on our right.

Okay, we're going to make a left up here. Okay. Oh, yikes. This is a dirt road. Yeah. It's going to be slow going. And this will take us even deeper into Hell Hollow. Okay, let's just pull over here. Oh, there's a little pond here. Yep. That would be Driscoll's Pond.

And I see a brook that feeds the pond. And that would be Mount Misery Brook. Mount Misery? Yeah. Come on. Mount Misery in Hell Hollow? I know. And we're looking for a witch and a curse in a place no one would hear us scream? Are we going to get out of here alive? You never know, Ray. You never know.

So the Hell Hollow name has a few different origins, but one story that's been passed around for a long time is that back in the late 1600s, there was once a Native American girl who was killed in this valley by British soldiers. They say her unjust murder cursed this land and that you can still hear her shrieks echo throughout Hell Hollow. And there's talk of a curse, too. Now, we've talked about how a lot of terrible events like that from our past haunt and curse us no matter what. So true. I mean, for some, it's a metaphor. For others, it's literal.

The other version of how this place got its name is a little more mundane but practical. Maybe our puritanical ancestors wanted to keep people away, mainly because as farmland goes, the soil's rocky and rough, plus it's swampy and marshy. It's a place to be avoided for most folks, but not all. Well, there's always the hermits or those people who want to stay away from it all.

or those who maybe can't afford more prime real estate. All right, here's a little more background on Voluntown. The region was named Volunteertown back in the year 1700 in honor of the volunteer soldiers who fought in the Narragansett War. So maybe there's some truth to the Native American girl getting murdered here.

The town officially incorporated in 1721. The early industries were farms and a few textile mills. It's always been a small and quiet town, the kind of town where everyone knows each other. A small town with some secrets and some skeletons in its closet. There's talk of a witch hanged in these woods, her grave desecrated, and so her spirit roams the forest. We're going to dive deep on this one because we got the chance to connect with a direct descendant of this alleged ghost. You'll hear from her soon.

To figure out this haunting, let's head back to the year 1886. It's October of 1886 here in the Hell Hollow section of Voluntown, Connecticut, and we're standing on the farm of Mercy and Charles Reynolds. The two own this area of land and a single horse. They've only been here for a few years. The valley is wide open with rolling hills and a few ponds and streams definitely give sections of this hollow a swampy look.

It's not an easy existence either. I mean, the land's rough, it's marshy, it's not easy to work. But this is what the Reynolds family could afford. Mercy and Charles don't have an easy life here in Voluntown. Two of their sons died three years ago from diphtheria, a bacterial infection that attacks the nose and throat. Both brothers were buried in the family plot not too far from here. But that's how life goes out here in these rural farms. Tragically, not every child grows up. But still, life goes on. It has to.

Almost three years ago, Mercy and Charles welcomed their daughter Maude into the world. Maude has been a joy around the house. A cute kid with a big smile. But recently, the poor girl has been ill. Mom and Dad are keeping a close eye on her. A few days go by, and Maude is still sick. But she still has her appetite, which is always a good sign. It's the morning of October 12th, and Mercy Reynolds has come in to check on how her daughter Maude is doing. She's been in the hospital for a while.

It takes only a glance to see the worst has happened. Sadly, Maude passed away in the night. Next to the child's lifeless body, her mother finds an apple with a few bites taken out of it. The Reynolds family is completely crushed by this discovery. Maude was just shy of her third birthday.

Charles thinks maybe Maude choked on a piece of apple, but the doctor who writes up the death certificate lists the cause of death as diphtheria, which means possibly both were true. The girl was sick, and maybe her constricted throat just couldn't handle that bite of apple. Maude's heartbroken mother sees her daughter's teeth marks in the apple and decides she wants to preserve the half-eaten fruit. She places the apple in a jar and fills it with alcohol so she can see her daughter's teeth marks for a while longer.

Next comes the somber task of burying the young girl's body. Charles is ready to dig a grave in the family plot on the far side of their land, but Mercy won't hear it. She insists on placing the grave on a small hill near the house so she can see it from the window. So the grave is dug, Maude's small body is laid to rest, and some rocks are placed around the grave. As soon as Charles can gather the funds, he also adds a cement cross to the grave. And that brings us back to today.

So there's a lot more to say on this one. Yeah, I bet. It doesn't sound like Maude Reynolds was ever a witch. I mean, she wasn't even three when she died. Yeah, no one thought Maude was a witch when she was alive, or for years after her death, for that matter. This is the case of multiple legends combining over time. So how did this all happen? Well, first, the Reynolds family took care of Maude's grave for as long as they lived here.

But when the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, these farms were devastated. The farmers either abandoned their land or sold it to the state, which eventually led to Connecticut forming the Patchogue State Forest.

Trees began to fill in, and now all this land is forest. Okay. I think I'm seeing how this ghostly legend is coming together. The home, farm, and grave are abandoned by the family. Right. The forest grows, and suddenly this lone grave is out here all isolated. You're exactly right. And by the 1950s and into the 1960s, vandals would come out here and knock over the cross or leave graffiti on nearby stones. At one point, a five-foot-tall cement cross was stolen.

Maude's sister Lydia married a man named Jesse who used to come out here periodically to clean up the grave and even replace the broken cross. But eventually he passed away, leaving no one to care for the grave.

According to some locals, at one point a sign was placed by the grave warning any vandals that they would be cursed if they messed with Little Maude. Oh man, I bet a sign like that only made it worse. Yeah. And that sign would explain the witch reputation too. If there's no marker, you have no idea how old the person was at the time of the death. Plus, we have no record of any hanging out here. This is a case of various backstories getting combined.

So we're walking deeper into the woods looking for Maude's grave. Though we're not going to offer exact coordinates as to where we are, we can tell you that the grave is near the Voluntown and Stirling town lines.

And there it is just ahead. So I can see there's some large rocks lying around. It's located near a colonial stone wall. And one single slab of a stone is standing upright. There's no markings on the slab. It's just a rock that's obviously been placed there. And look at that. Yeah, yeah. Around the stone, some people have left some trinkets. Yeah. I see a couple of pennies. There's a small jar filled with some kind of liquid that I won't be touching. Right. Some decayed flowers too. Yeah.

For a little extra help with this story, we've brought in a special guest with a unique connection. My name is Marnie Reynolds-Burke, and Maud Reynolds was my great-aunt. Wow, it's amazing to speak with a direct descendant of Maud. So Marnie is 54 years old now, living in Sterling, Connecticut, but she grew up next door in Moosip, so right in the region of Hell Hollow Road.

Maud had a brother named Charles, who was Marnie's great-grandfather. Marnie's now an artist. She's written and illustrated several children's books, but she also wrote a novel about this story called Mercy of Hell Hollow, her lost journal, 1883 to 1887.

Marnie, how did you first learn you were related to Maude Reynolds? That's quite a bomb to drop on a kid.

How I was brought up was I would go to Patchogue Forest. I'm an only child. My mom and dad, we would go for a hike and I would always hear about the Reynolds Homestead and there was lilacs along the road. And my father actually took some of the cuttings home and we have lilacs at our house from the homestead.

And he would talk about my relatives. So I grew up just knowing that my relatives lived there. I didn't, you know, I was little, so I didn't put a lot of thought into it. And then as I got older and got into high school, that's when I started hearing all about, you know, the Witch of Hell Hollow.

So what were the kids in high school saying about the witch? I had a classmate that actually was bragging about urinating on the grave, which made me very upset because, you know, it's my family. And plus, even if it wasn't my family, I don't feel as though you should be doing that. So I wanted to go clean up the grave and stuff. But my father, I guess, was a little nervous about the legend himself. And he's like, I don't want you near the grave.

Marnie explained that she still does visit the grave from time to time, but she doesn't want to do anything to draw attention to Maude, which is why she doesn't fix up her final resting place. People have tried that before.

It's a fine line between sharing the story and protecting the innocent dead. We get the struggle. We go through it too. At this point in my life, I kind of feel like I'm her keeper. I don't want anybody hurting her. So, and that's why I wrote the novel because I said, boy, what a story this is. Because there's actually more to the story where she had two older brothers that died. So my poor grandmother lost three children. Defacing or harming a grave is a universal taboo. You're not supposed to do it across almost all cultures.

Every person in the ground was once someone's child, their sibling, their parent or relative. When we look at this story through time, we can see how the notion of the girl becoming a witch who has cursed this land came to be. But as for the ghost, maybe we should be haunted by Little Maud. Not just so we remember, but so we never forget to respect the dead who came before us. We'll let Marnie Reynolds-Burke have the last word on this. I would just hope that people would humanize her and leave her rest in peace.

Amen. And that takes us to After the Legend, where we dig a little deeper into this week's story and sometimes veer off course. After the Legends brought to you by our Patreon patrons. Without our patrons, there is no podcast. So we are most grateful for their help with our hosting and production costs, marketing, travel, everything else it takes you to bring you two podcasts each week. It's only three bucks per month. And for that, you get early ad-free access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. Just head over to patreon.com slash newenglandlegends to sign up.

Would appreciate it. And if you want to see some pictures of Maude's grave taken by the great Frank Grace, click on the link in our episode description, where you can also see a picture of Charles and Mercy Reynolds that Marnie shared with us. Or you can go to our website and click on episode 396.

Crazy, huh? Yeah, sad story. Two sons, and then they get the daughter, and then she passes three years later. Losing three kids is just... I mean, that's brutal. You have nothing to take your mind off it. Not that you can if you lose a child, I would imagine, but you've got nothing to distract you. You're out in the woods. You're secluded in this area with only your husband or your wife, depending on which one you are. And...

there's nothing to do but think. Yeah. They had other kids. There was five others. So, I mean, you know, busy taking care of them. But still, also, like, think about it. So the two brothers who died first were buried in the family plot, which was a little further away.

But then this one, she's the first girl, right? So she was special and she was always an eye shot of the house. Right. So that's literally over your shoulder no matter what, you know, growing up. And a reminder. Seems like a good idea at the time until you have to see it every time you look out the window.

Well, right. Reminded. Yeah. I mean, you wanted, look, there's when you, when you're a child who loses their parents, there's a word for it. You're called an orphan. There's no, there's when you're a married person who loses a spouse, you're called a widow or a widower. And there is no word for a person who loses their child. That's interesting. Yeah. Cause nobody wants to be reminded with a name. There is no word. Yeah. It's awful. I do want to point something out. If you look up this story just about anywhere, uh,

They list the names of Maude's parents as Lucy and Gilbert Reynolds. It appears in newspapers. It appears in books as Lucy and Gilbert over and over and over.

again, who is family said his name was Charles Gilbert Reynolds, but she always knew him as Charles, which is why we went with that. And she said she always knew the, the wife as mercy, never, never Lucy, which is why we went with that. So Lucy kind of sounds the same could. So you might find some discrepancies out there. At the end of the day, we used the family as our source for, for which name to go with. Um,

Um, so, you know, I get it. The, the, the details. You're getting ahead of the, uh, of the comments we're getting ahead. No, I get it. Someone's like, I wrote a book and their name was this. I get it. I know. And, you know, uh, but I went with what the family said. So, um, but, and thank you Marnie for, for talking to us. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it was, it's, uh, it does humanize this, you know, and I, we get it. I get it. Right. There's a grave out in the woods all by itself. Uh, some ruins, not much left to see of the foundation of the house. Uh,

But when you look at the photo, and it's on our website, it's on the episode page, thank you, Barney, for sharing that, of, you know, Mr. Gilbert and his wife, I think there was a 28-year age gap between them. Mr. Gilbert was much older. He's got this white beard, and there's a little child between them that we can't promise you who that is, who the child in the photo is, but it's suspected that it's Lydia. Yeah.

Um, but, uh, but you look at that and you're like, these are real people. Yeah. And they're, they lost a child. Right. Ugh. You know? And, um,

I don't understand. Look, if you want to visit a grave, of course, that's what it's there for. Visit any grave you like. I think that's perfectly acceptable. Take pictures if you want to. You know, like take a photo if that's something important to you to sort of memorialize it in some way. Leave an offering. Flowers, right? Pennies in this case. Yeah, pennies I think are okay. Little toys or whatever. I get it. That's all okay. What would possess someone to harm a grave?

Like, you can't undo that. You're a very angry person. Maybe you lost somebody and you don't like the idea of death and you're mad at death and that represents death. I don't know. I never understood that either. Graffiti, knocking over gravestones. Right. I mean... Go tip a cow. Urinating on it. As Marnie told us, right? One of her classmates said, like, oh, I dared the curse. I urinated on it. And as she said, you know...

we didn't include this part of the interview, but as she said, she's just like, well, the story was if you messed with the grave, you'd be cursed and die. And I'm like, well, you know, that's actually true. And she's like, what are you talking about? I know that woman that peed on her grave, you know, and she's in her 50s now. I'm like,

but she is going to die. That's true. We all died. It may take a while. 100% correct, yeah. So it's still going to work. It just could take a few more decades. I don't know. Yeah. And even if she's in her 50s, she's still got a long ways to go. Something could happen early on. The curse could be real. I'm still waiting for the curse of the, what was it up in Montpelier? Montpelier, yeah. You sat on Black Agnes' lap. Yeah, yeah. Nothing's happened.

Yet. But it will. It will. It will, guaranteed, and that's how it goes. When I grew up in Newtown, Connecticut, a buddy of mine, there was a grave in the woods behind his house. One grave. And it was a child who died from smallpox. Back then, you didn't put people with smallpox in with the general population. It still seemed contagious, and you didn't want to get anyone else sick.

So I remember him telling me, he said, yeah, everyone in the family knows, like, yeah, there's a grave back there. It's just, it is what it is. And he said at one point he saw his brother go back there with a shovel. And he's just like, no, no, no, no, no. He's like, he took like a dirt full or two out of the ground. And he's like, stop it. We're not going to do that. That's a whole other level of desecrating a grave. Yeah, that's, yeah, we're not going to exhume some child from, you know, a century and a half ago. There's a curiosity there, but still. Listen, I mean, yeah, I know, and I get it. And...

You know, sometimes we share these stories and I got to put myself back into like 13-year-old Jeff's head. Yeah. Like, there's a grave out in the woods all by itself and it's cursed. Yeah. I want to see it. Right? You know? See it though. Fine. Sure. You know, I get it. What are you going to do? Dig it up, open, see it, and then what do you do? Don't mess with it. Don't mess with it. Yeah, no. I mean, that's... Yeah, there's got to be some level of respect. And...

And I get it. And Marnie pointed this out, too. She wrote a book about it, right? She's like, I don't want to call attention to it. She has the means and she lives close enough to just go fix it up. I mean, at one point she said she saw a photo where there was like a little white picket fence around it and flowers and stuff. But the people would just knock it over. They would just vandalize it. And so, you know, she's like, so if I go out there and I do something special, well, now it's real easy to find. Right.

Like now anybody can, Oh, look for the white picket fence or whatever. She's like, I could do it. Yeah. But then it's going to call more attention. And what's the point at this point of the game? Well, right. And so, um, so at the same time, like we, we talked about how, you know, it's, it's a balance between like telling the story, remembering the history, remembering that people do lose children. And, you know, this was a tough life back then letting that haunt us. Sure. Um, and sort of being respectful too, but I, but also like the, just to reiterate the, which point, um,

When someone put a sign, you'll be cursed. Well, only witches do curses. And you don't know that it's a two-year-old down there. She could be 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, right? Like you didn't know. And all you know is that this is a grave and it's a woman, a girl, you know, and, you know, it's just, it's unfortunate. But it's, there's something that happens when it's 1800s, feels like forever ago. Doesn't matter. Nobody's still around with any connections. And guess what? Sometimes they are.

Got a weird story you think we should check out for a future podcast? Reach out to us anytime through our website. Most of our story leads come from you. Plus, we love hearing from you. Our website is also the place where you can find our interactive map to plan your own legend trip. Plus, dates to see Jeff's ongoing story tour and dates to see my band, the Pup Kings.

We'd like to thank Marnie Reynolds-Burke for joining us this week. Thank you to our Patreon patrons. Thank you so much to our sponsors. And our theme music is by Jon Judd. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think.